friend, i'm afraid you've been lied to. it's not your fault. we've all absorbed loads of lies. when i was a teenager, i thought no guy would ever want to date me because i wasn't skinny or "pretty". a number of humiliating experiences drove that home. but over time, it turned out to not be the case at all. i had to revise my understanding. and i had to not give up or get grumpy about it.

the good news is now that you know that you've been sold some bad goods, you can start to figure out what the real story is. and only good things can come from that :} there is some great advice in this thread, especially this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21977225